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October 06, 2012

About Bailey: My First Dog

I always wanted a dog, but my sister and I were never
allowed to have one. Somehow, we convinced our parents that we should get a cat
instead. We must have tortured her, or something to that effect, because that
cat avoided us at all costs; she was a classic cat. Deep down, I must have
known that I was a dog person, because I yearned to play with the cat and hold
her in my lap, but she would have none of it.

Many years later, upon entering high school, I was,
once again, able to convince my parents to get me another pet. This time, it
was a dog. A beautiful, long-haired,
black dog that we adopted from the local SPCA. My mother was the one
that went to adopt her during a week day after we had been there one Sunday
afternoon to find her. When I got home from school that day, I was so excited
to finally have a dog, but I quickly found out that the name we had chosen for
her, was not actually the name my mom ended-up bestowing upon her:

When my mom was a little girl, she had a dog named
"Lady". Lady was a farm dog, but she was also very special to my mom,
and so my mom had decided that she would like to name our new dog
"Lady". But, when I got home from school, my mom informed me that
this dog was no lady -- she had run away from my mom before she could get her
into the car to bring her home -- and that her name was in fact
"Bailey". She decided upon "Bailey" because we had recently
seen an interview with Scott Wolf from "Party of Five" in which he
was asked if people were naming their babies after his character on the show.
He told them no, that a lot of people were actually naming their dogs after his
character -- and now our dog was one of them.

I loved Bailey so much. She was the first pet we had
that would actually play with me, and would let me pet her. I enjoyed taking
her for walks, and sharing my ice cream sandwiches with her. But then one day,
when I came home from school and went to let Bailey out of her crate, she
wasn't leaving her crate like she normally would; she wasn't able to. I didn't
understand what was going on, and when I was finally able to coax her out of
the crate, she used the wall to support herself while she walked. We later
found out that Bailey had had a seizure, and that was only the first of many.

It was after that that Bailey started to get
aggressive. While we were out on walks, she would try to bite people that
wanted to pet her, and once, while we were playing, she even bit me; she even
broke my skin. That was it for my parents. They wanted to know what was going
on, and it was soon discovered that Bailey had brain cancer. Soon after the
diagnosis, Bailey was put to sleep. Her seizures continued to get worse, and so
did her aggression. My parents knew it was time, but it was very difficult for
me. She was my very first dog, and I loved her so very much. That summer was a
hard one. Bailey will always hold a special place in my heart.

Several years later, I went back to the same local SPCA
and picked out a dog of my very own just a few days after my husband and I
moved into our very first home. I knew almost immediately that he was the dog
for us. He was the perfect little dog, and he even had a perfect little name to
match: Ivan. Ivan has been with us for almost six years now, and I have loved
every minute with him. I look forward to the day that my son is old enough to
play with him, and I often day dream about how they will have those perfect
Hollywood moments when Ivan sleeps with my son on his bed, or watches sadly out
the window as he goes to school. I hope that my son will have the same love and
excitement for Ivan as I did for Bailey.

*Note: This blog post has been posted previously on Kaytee Lauren's blog. I am posting it again here because it is important information to another post that I will be doing later on this month.